Welcome!

This body of work began sometime in the mid 1990's, as an experiment, seeing if I could adhere a dress to a canvas and create a painting over all the textures. "Dress painting" is a term I came up with to explain these when I simply couldn't think of anything better. Over the years they have evolved, with new elements of collage being added. Dress patterns, photographs, and embroidery all appear from time to time, as well as lino block prints, rubber stamps and gold leaf. I will use this space to explore the beginnings of this series, as well as showing my latest work. If the piece is available for sale you'll find the price at the bottom. Free shipping in the U.S. Contact me at kallencole@aol.com to purchase.

Friday, June 7, 2013

One of the things I like about working in this series is, how intuitive the process is. My dress pieces are largely planned, the plans may change as the situation requires, but there is a general feeling that I'm going for. I work toward that.

But with these, I just start. What I just did on the canvas, influences what I'll do next.

So, I pulled out these 6 identical 8" square canvases, and painted the first one with a brilliant deep cadmium red. I liked how it looked, and decided to do another, until I decided that all 6 needed to be different variations of the red.

Then, I started making decisions about what to collage on top. I managed to pull in the palette to just a handful of neutral colors, plus the red that was already there.

These are the 6 that I ended up with. Black was the final addition to a few.

I kinda like them.

They will all be available at the Des Moines Art Festival, or beforehand, if you send me an email. They are 8"square, on deep canvas with the edges painted black. $145 ea.

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About Me

I have two blogs which I try to tend to regularly, Dresspaintings, and (Elle)ements. The dresspaintings are "the big girls" multi paneled mixed media paintings, and the (Elle)ements are little elements of the big pieces. 4" square canvases containing fragments and bits of stories from "the big girls." I hope you enjoy them all!